As of 2011, Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organisation in Rakuten Inc. He was appointed to the role of technical advisor for VASILY, Inc. starting in June 2014. - From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukihiro_Matsumoto

Heroku was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2010.

Japan. With roots in Japan, Ruby was very popular throughout Asia in the earlier days of the language, before Rails.

Granted, this support was perhaps more cultural than corporate. There's something to be said for a community that grows in your own backyard, has significant documentation in your native language(s), etc.

Basecamp.

Basecamp supports Rails. Ruby is mostly developed by a community of Japanese developers.

That supports OP's theory: Ruby wasn't mainstream before Rails.

While this might have been true, it was that screencast and the rise of Rails that put Ruby on the map in the west.

Basecamp is minuscule next to Google.